Fabu Phillis Carter, a scholar, educator, and the City of Madison’s first African American Poet Laureate, and Jane Reynolds, the superb jazz pianist and retired co-host of “Strictly Jazz Sounds” on WORT-FM, are headed to Washington D.C. this weekend to perform their unique program, “Remember Me: Mary Lou Williams in Poetry and Music,” on Saturday, May 10, at the Kennedy Center as part of the 2025 Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival.
“Mary Lou Williams is one of the giants of jazz. Not only was she contemporary with the names we recognize immediately, like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, but her students, people who came to learn from her, were legendary artists like Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. So she was so powerful and so valued and such a genius,” Carter tells Madison365.
Both Carter and Reynolds are huge fans of Williams, the legendary jazz pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader and educator. Performing at the Kennedy Center is a rare opportunity for the two Madison-based artists who have performed a jazz-and-poetry program about Williams at concert halls, schools, and other venues across Dane County.
“Mary Lou Williams was always experimenting and innovating. She played every kind of jazz and she invented a new genre of jazz she called ‘Sacred Jazz.’ She was very creative and innovative. She is such a fascinating woman.
“Mary Lou had a lot of problems with being recognized, even when she was alive, and certainly when she was dead. One of my goals is to help people know about her life and legacy,” Carter adds. “Ever since we celebrated her 100th anniversary, I have been talking to Howard [Landsman] and saying, ‘I really want to do the poetry at the Mary Lou Williams Festival.'”
Williams, who was born in 1910 and died in 1981, became one of the most influential pianists and composers in jazz history, whose work encompassed all eras and styles of jazz. Fifteen years ago, in 2010, the Madison community celebrated the 100th birthday of Mary Lou Williams, who conducted a memorable residency at the UW-Madison in 1976.
“Madison did one of the most extensive 100th birthday celebrations of Mary Lou Williams in the whole USA. This was through a Mary Lou Williams Centennial Committee led by Howard Landsman, a huge supporter of jazz here in Madison,” Carter remembers. “We had 52 events. It was amazing. We brought in academicians on Mary Lou. We brought her manager. We brought artists who had performed Mary Lou. We did Sacred Mary Lou at Mount Zion Church. We brought music so that high schools would have it and could play it. It was 52 events that went on for the entire year. It was poetry, it was music, it was all the art forms.”
Under the guidance of artistic co-directors Fabu and Jane Reynolds, and with assistance from the Mary Lou Williams Foundation and the Institute of Jazz Studies, the local Centennial Committee produced a diverse, year-long array of concerts of Williams’ music and educational programs in Madison that illuminated her contributions to American music and culture, engaging more than 8,000 people in the process.
“We were such a diverse group, and yet we all became friends, and we all united around the goal of elevating Mary Lou Williams, who had largely been obscured and forgotten,” Carter says. “And then at the end of it, we even donated money to music organizations that featured youth, because one of her visions was that young people would continue to play and understand and appreciate jazz.
“After that celebration, I was able to go to Pittsburgh and see places she lived and the streets that are named after her and look at the jazz museum. I also went to Duke University, which has named a whole wing after her,” Carter continues. “I was able to go to New Jersey to Rutgers [University], where her papers are housed. And because of doing the Mary Lou Williams 2010 event, and having met her former manager, I was able to get his permission to access her unwritten biography and her papers. It was just a magical world.”
Carter would go on to write her Ph.D. dissertation on Mary Lou Williams, along with two books of poetry about her.
“I also wrote a coloring book for youth on Mary Lou Williams to introduce her to them and for them to be able to color,” she says. “And so since then, periodically, along with Jane Reynolds, we have played various venues where I do the poetry and Jane does Mary Lou’s composition.”
Carter says that she has always dreamed of presenting her Mary Lou-inspired poetry at the Kennedy Center as part of the annual Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival hosted by the great jazz vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater. Carter met Bridgewater when she headlined the 2024 Madison Jazz Fest in Madison last June, and the Kennedy Center would later invite Carter and Reynolds to present an updated version of their jazz-and-poetry program at the Mary Lou Williams Festival.
Their performance is scheduled for Saturday, May 10, at 6 p.m. (EDT), on the Center’s Millennium Stage, just prior to the Festival’s final headline concerts. Here in Madison, Café CODA, 1224 Williamson St., will host a live stream of Carter’s and Reynold’s performance at a watch party.
“I really appreciate Jane Reynolds and it is such an honor for us both to play at the Mary Lou Williams Festival at the Kennedy Center,” Carter says. I’m able to do different poems, and she’s able to do the Mary Lou music that she loves. We are looking forward to celebrating Mary Lou Williams together.”
Prior to their performance at the Kennedy Center, Café CODA will present director Carol Bash’s award-winning documentary film “Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band” at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday. Admission is free.
Following their performance, Cafe Coda will present award-winning pianist and author Deanna Witkowski at 7 p.m. who will perform a solo concert to cap off Café CODA’s special four-part tribute to the legendary jazz musician Mary Lou Williams on the occasion of her 115th birthday. Witkowski is one of America’s foremost interpreters of, and authorities on, the music of Williams.
For folks wanting to watch the performance from home, they can go to the Kennedy Center’s Digital Stage website, and scroll over to Fabu and Jane’s Millennium Stage event, and click on the “Watch Now” link.
“A quote that I love from Mary Lou Williams is ‘jazz has always been a shield around me keeping good in and bad out.’ Isn’t that beautiful? This woman was born and lived in a time when Black people and women had very little rights,” Carter says. “So for her to have created such a wonderful career, despite all those circumstances, is pretty amazing.
“I am so happy and so honored to be paying tribute to this great, great woman whom everybody should know about,” she adds.
